Didn't have too many ECs, but that's mostly because robotics takes up so much time and runs for most of the year. Obviously, things like history etc., but how about subjects like art or economics? This means that the vast majority (75%) of Stanford students get above these scores, and those attending with scores lower than these are superstars who make up for their scores in other (highly impressive!) In other words, take APs when they are available and, within APs, try to choose the harder option (Calculus BC instead of AB, for example). Even doing the MIT summer programs, there are still plenty who get deferred or rejected (although that isn't to say it doesn't help your chances). MIT doesnt care. If you purchase an item through one of our links, PrepScholar may receive a commission. MIT places a high value on having students with quirks and unique passions, not just high test scores. r/ApplyingToCollege is the premier forum for college admissions questions, advice, and discussions, from college essays and scholarships to SAT/ACT test prep, career guidance, and more. :). All of us can fit into one room for weekly socials. And for your IAPs, did you have to be fluent in Japanese and Spanish to take part in it? I. ik i need to learn what GPA means but im not from a country that works on GPA, doing a quick google search does a 3.65 GPA mean straight A student? Academic competitions were second nature to him and he was a truly passionate STEM student. Earn at least an A- in all your classes. I mean, I know that it claims everyone is well-rounded and such, but still, sometimes when a school has institute of technology in it it can get kind of hard to understand how it could be balanced. AP US History was not enough to quench my insatiable thirst for history I did AP Euro History and AP World History via self-study and proceeded to get 5s in all three subjects. Yaaaay, go MUN!! If you're a little weaker on the humanities side, shoring up your SAT/ACT score is the fastest and most effective way to improve. Over this past weekend, many prefroshies asked me a very interesting question and I believe that this warrants a more drawn-out response from me. (fact: accidentally typed a t after your name and quickly backspaced that would have been awkward), Its relieving to know that it is possible to do all the things youre interested in. Even if your subject of interest is Prussian history, you should be cautious about getting a B in AP Calculus AB, taking the easiest math classes, or getting as "low" as a 650 on the SAT Math section. major takeaways: from every semester of mit | MIT Admissions MIT wants to instill in us the confidence that after we leave the Institvte, we would be able to tackle whatever problems come our way, either through our own ability or with help from teammates. Fred is co-founder of PrepScholar. The USAMO series will be a definite spike for you if you manage to make it into the top 1,000 or 2,000 spots. Sports teams will take up a ton of time, though, so check that you're well positioned and able to handle the time commitment before making any decisions. Once you have a competition or field in mind, it's useful to evaluate how prestigious it is. Our students work to improve their communities in different ways, from tackling the worlds biggest challenges to being a good friend. Audition for world-class ensembles, enter competitions, basically just stand out. Your spike makes you a strong candidate because it's unlikely that many other students will have the exact same spike as you. MIT admits around 1,400 students a year, and you can definitely be one of them! He was super involved in everything and seemed like the kind of person that either had more hours in the day to do everything or had incredible time management skills. I love every blog where you mention Japanese and Japan :3, Dont worry I get emails that begin with Hey Christ a lot. Assuming every student offered admission enrolled, the acceptance rate is low at 4.1%. Again, I hate doing the been there-done that talk (really! is it easier to get into mit for humanities - vmcott.com I am not a de jure international student since I hold a US passport. Here's an excerpt from the profile of the 2020 1st place winner: "In her research project, recently featured inBloomberg, Lillian built a simple tool to investigate how well harvests would do in the next season. Answer (1 of 11): This will come as no surprise: Depends. What SAT Target Score Should You Be Aiming For? ACT Writing: 15 Tips to Raise Your Essay Score, How to Get Into Harvard and the Ivy League, Is the ACT easier than the SAT? This myth is the most pernicious because so many people blindly believe it. Check out our complete guide to Ivy League acceptance rates. The truth, however, is that while Stanford of course cares deeply about academics, it also cares about qualities beyond academics. Let's call him Kevin. Learn more about PrepScholar Admissions to maximize your chance of getting in. This means you should try to aim for the most prestigious competition you can actually do well in. Ask below and we'll reply! Remember, MIT wants applicants that are interesting as people. Next, look at the skills of the average participant: the more skilled the people coming in are, the better. is it easier to get into mit for humanities Lets hear more from Lillian below. Conversely, if you're above the SAT/ACT Math threshold, you definitely will benefit from taking the USAMO series, even if it isn't your spike. is it easier to get into mit for humanities That means earning an A or A+ in every one of your STEM courses, with only the very occasional A-. How to Get Into MIT: 5 Expert Admissions Tips, applicants who applied early action had a fairly significant advantage over students who applied at the regular deadline, encouraged (but not required) to submit scores from an English proficiency exam, , rather than write one long essay. The biggest reason that naturally talented STEM students perform at just a mediocre level in STEM courses is a lack of diligence. Not for grades and tests, those should come easily to MIT kids, but for national competitions like USAMO and IMO. The most naive and prevalent myth is that getting into Stanford is all about academics. So what's a good enough baseline in SAT or ACT Math? It made me feel a little bit better about insane psets in the coming years (still a little intimidated). IAP Germany is open to students without any knowledge in German since you take German 1 there, and I think thats it for foreign language IAP trips. Just curious, but how many APs did you take in high school? is it easier to get into mit for humanitiesanson county warrant list. People with far less are can be accepted, just because they happen to have a specific personality. What's unique about the ISEF, though, is that it's the premier science fair in the United States. Im not forcing you to read my blog, so if you think its revolting then by all means, please go do something else that doesnt disgust you. The USAMO series is all about pure math and solving problems fairly quickly (think a few minutes to an hour in a timed environment). Just like the GPA, the average scores are amongst the highest of any school in the United States. He got one B and it was in freshman English, otherwise took the hardest STEM classes and laid off the challenging Humanities courses in our school. People change their majors. For your base diversity of extracurriculars, it helps to focus more on engineering and/or math; it also helps if your spike is in engineering or math. Put down the football and the debate notecards and focus on violin if that's what you love. For the ACT, the average score is an incredibly high 35 out of the perfect score of 36. When our Lit teacher first dissected The Four Quartets for us that warm sunny day in March of my senior year, my view towards English Literature changed forever. I'd say something in the 720-800 range on the SAT Math section or 32-36 on ACT Math will do. For example, you can opt to apply to become a Burchard Scholar (which Paul and I both are). I agree that there's not really a way to guarantee or make it very likely to get into MIT. Fred graduated from Harvard University with a Bachelor's in Mathematics and a PhD in Economics. You should take care to put enough effort into these subjects so you don't drop down to the middle of the pack. My assigned conference topic is Health and Modern Technology, which still relates to what I study. For one, it's the oldest of the high school subject Olympiads, and it was the subject of Cold War tensions between the US and USSR. I just got accepted to an US-Japan Student Conference where selected American university students meet with similarly selected Japanese counterparts to discuss many global social, environmental, and political topics in Japan this summer. Then, at the end of the day, you end up with a mythical optimal application that proves you're (nearly) equally great at everything. Your application will stand out even more if you take those interests and apply them to academic pursuits. How to Get Into Stanford (by an Accepted Student), In her research project, recently featured in, , Lillian built a simple tool to investigate how well harvests would do in the next season. Press question mark to learn the rest of the keyboard shortcuts. Don't just take my word for it, thoughyou can Google it yourself. To illustrate this point more clearly, let me tell you the real story of my high school classmate. You should also be taking the most difficult STEM courses offered at your school. So if your focus is outside STEM, you should be the best you can be in that area and, if possible, try to tie that work into some potential interdisciplinary work with STEM. Don't study or invest your time in something like that if you don't care about it. Stanford cares about far more than just academics, so try to squeeze in some good extracurriculars and volunteer experience. Show that your academic curiosity intersects with your passions. (Its really easy to get caught up and do things that what you may think will make you successful and then ask yourself why you dedicate 13 hours a week to an internship you are not happy with or stay with a UROP that you find completely mind-numbing.). and psst, hes in one of the photos on that blog I linked to if you cant find him). Ha! To learn more about working on your spike for college, check out our guide on how to get into the Ivy League (search for "Part 2" and scroll down to #4). Furthermore, Stanford is looking for students who will succeed in the future. Ive strengthened my Japanese and Spanish ability, leading to two utterly phenomenal IAPs in those aforementioned countries. Studying satellite images and data from theDescartes Labs, Lillian successfully forecasted 2020 crop yields for every country within Africa. Is it harder to get into MIT early action? - Quora When you say a school is "good in the humanities," you still can't take every single class that the school offers. Posted by ; words for deep love in other languages; You have to be rigorous, but not nearly to the degree of professional science research. Answer (1 of 14): So I really think it depends on who you are so to speak. The first reason is basic numbers: there are simply too many students with stellar academics. You'll need to answer four short prompts (each answer should be roughly 200 words) on various aspects of your life: a description of your background, what department you're interested in at MIT, what you do for fun, a way that you contribute to your community, and a challenge that you have faced in your life. That area is your "spike," and it can be in almost anything: conducting microbiology research, publishing short stories, starting a small business, etc. For example, if you're into religious studies with a focus on the Old Testament, you might talk about how you'd like to use statistical analysis to refine the documentary hypothesis. The middle 50% of MIT applicants earn between a 1510 and a 1580 on a 1600 SAT scale. Which is easier to get into MIT or Harvard? 21L also receives some of the highest course evaluation scores at MIT, if youre curious. Knowing the rules won't guarantee you admission, but you'll have a heck of a better chance than if you were applying in the dark. hbspt.cta._relativeUrls=true;hbspt.cta.load(360031, 'c8b8e502-c285-4182-9589-5f8ae230e78a', {"useNewLoader":"true","region":"na1"}); Hayley Milliman is a former teacher turned writer who blogs about education, history, and technology. Stanford is one of the most difficult universities to get into, as are UC Berkeley and Cornell. This said, I want to point out some other reasons why I feel like if you are a strong humanities student, it may even be better for you to come to MIT rather than another traditional humanities school. How to Get Into MIT - ingeniusprep.com You'll see that Stanford is in the US News' top-ranked engineering schools, while Harvard and Yale are nowhere near the top 10. For a correct assessment of the difficulty it takes to get into MIT, do a quick Google search and you'll see that the chance of MIT having a double digit acceptance rate is lower than MIT acceptance rate going into the negatives so they'll start kicking out current students. Needless to say, he'll fit right in at MIT next year. This does, of course, entail the catch that just slapping on humanities classes because you figure it'll look good. However, MIT has taught me that I cant rely on these things forever. On the other hand, Physics and Informatics have a lot of hands-on sections that require a ton of resourcefulness and novel problem solving. :D. Just curious as major in Biology, what is Biology related to US-Japan Student Conference? I get surprised looks from people when I tell them my major. So I count art as humanities as well. If you can solve this without any issues, then you'd be a strong candidate for a math competition: Three real numbers in the interval [0, 1] are chosen independently and at random. When you say a school is good in the humanities, you still cant take every single class that the school offers. As you might imagine, the most well-known, difficult, and participant-heavy competitions are the most prestigious. But all these schools follow the same pattern of being highly ranked and having a slight engineering tiltand all have a common admissions pattern. Contribute positively to your community while you're in high school. You should have a strong plan for studying for the SAT or ACT so that you achieve the best score possible. SAT is a registered trademark of the College Entrance Examination BoardTM. The MIT essay prompts are designed specifically to get to the heart of what makes youwell, you. If you're looking for test-prep tips, take a look at our expert guides to SAT prep and ACT prep. Though Cornell and Berkeley are not the same as Stanford, they are both very highly ranked colleges with a slight engineering tilt. is it easier to get into mit for humanities Unfortunately, college admissions are much more like an unstable boat: being too well rounded will ultimately sink you. These are two competitions everyone applying to Stanford should consider entering. My kids went on to score 770s and 800s on their SAT World History exams and many of them are anticipating a really good score in the upcoming AP exams next month. Now that you've achieved good SAT/ACT scores and have a well-rounded base of activities, it's time to build up that final factor that will get you in: your spike! A moderately good score in your English class will do. MIT is characterized as drinking from a firehose, and that is equally true for all majors. Unfortunately, an overly reactionary response to the above generates the worst myth.